I want ancestors
with names like Rudimentary Montgnard or Mechizenick von
Stubenhofmanschild or Spetnatz Giafortoni, NOT William
Brown or John Hunter or Mary Abbott.

I want ancestors
who could read and write, had their children baptized in
recognized houses of worship, went to school, purchased
land, left detailed wills (naming a huge extended family
as legatees), had their photographs taken once a year -
subsequently putting said pictures in elaborate frames
annotated with calligraphic inscriptions, and carved
voluble and informative inscriptions in their headstones.

I want relatives
who managed to bury their predecessors in established,
still-extant (and indexed) cemeteries.

I want family
members who wrote memoirs, who enlisted in the military
as officers and who served in strategically important
(and well documented) skirmishes.

I want relatives
who served as councilmen, school teachers, county clerks
and town historians.

I want relatives
who 'religiously' wrote in the family Bible, journaling
every little event and detailing the familial
relationship of every visitor.

In the case of
immigrant progenitors, I want them to have arrived only
in those years wherein passenger lists were indexed by
the National Archives, and I want them to have applied
for citizenship, and to have done so only in those
jurisdictions which have been established indices.

I want relatives
who were patriotic and clubby, who joined every
patrimonial society they could find, who kept diaries,
and listed all their addresses, who had paintings made of
their houses, and who dated every piece of paper they
touched.

I want forebears
who were wealthy enough to afford, and to keep for
generations, the tribal homestead, and who left all
aforementioned pictures and diaries and journals intact
in the library.

But most of all,
I want relatives I can FIND!

Originally Written and
Copyrighted by Barbara A. Brown
She kindly has allowed us to use her material.

Ms. Brown's "I Want" article was
originally posted in 1994 to the National Genealogical
Conference, FIDO bulletin board forum.